


Don't (Wanna) Know Who I Am

by altschmerzes



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Buck Whump, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Head Injury, Insecurity, Memory Loss, Nightmares, Protectiveness, Season/Series 01, Team as Family, Temporary Amnesia, featuring dad bobby and older siblings hen and chim, notable appearances also by karen and denny wilson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altschmerzes/pseuds/altschmerzes
Summary: Buck takes a nasty fall out on a job, and when he wakes up, he can't remember anything. Not what happened, not who the people in his hospital room are, not even his own name. The next two weeks he spends being passed from house to house every few days, Chimney, Hen, and Bobby taking turns keeping an eye on him while he tries to remember his life.The way back is slow and hard, and begs the question - who actually is Evan Buckley, and is he someone worth remembering? (Luckily, the rest of the 118 is there with an answer, if not to the first question, then at least to the second.)
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Bobby Nash, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 53
Kudos: 154





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to gav's house of found family whump and fluff how may i help you today, we've got a good old fashioned medically inaccurate amnesia trope fest first up! this was supposed to be a oneshot but it got A LITTLE LONG so i've split it up. 
> 
> this is set earlier in season one, after chim's accident and after hen and buck go to bobby's apartment, but before things get super serious with abby.

> _I don't wanna know who I am_
> 
> _Cause heaven only knows what I'll find_
> 
> _\- Mother Mother, "Alright"_

When he wakes, it’s slowly and in drifts, senses taking their time in returning to him. His body feels like someone has laid weighted blankets over each of his limbs, and tremors run through him every couple of moments, uncontrollable shivers unrelated to any kind of cold. His chest rises and falls with quick, shallow breaths, and there’s a sound coming into clarity, a strange robotic beeping. As he listens harder, trying to make out what it is, it speeds up just a little, and this is the same moment his sense of smell returns. Some kind of chemical scent, sharp and metallic, fills his throat, and he almost coughs.

It’s the light that does it. When he manages to coax heavy, uncooperative eyelids into raising just slightly, the cold, bright white light over his head tells him exactly where he is, and a low groan rises in his throat. Waking up in the hospital is never a good feeling. The list of good reasons to be waking up in the hospital is very short, and the list of bad reasons is very long, and he would hazard a guess that probably none of the good reasons involve not remembering how you got there.

Because he can’t. Remember how he got there. Though, the absolutely brutal headache he’s experiencing probably has something to do with it.

As his eyes adjust to the inhumanely bright lighting shouting down at him from the ceiling, he’s able to take in more of his surroundings. There’s a heart monitor beeping away next to him, the source of the shrill sound he’d heard earlier, and a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger. His entire body aches in a kind of dull background noise. Carefully rolling his heavy, pounding head to the side, he notices that he isn’t alone. There’s someone else in the room with him.

There’s another man in a chair next to his bed, watching him with a calm, neutral expression. The man doesn’t say anything, presumably waiting for him to speak first, but he doesn’t quite have his wits about him enough for that yet. It should be scary, to be so knocked off kilter, completely unable to defend himself should the need arise. But something tells him, innate and without explanation, that he has absolutely nothing to fear with this man in the room. He gets the distinct feeling, deep in his chest, that there isn’t a safer person, nobody more capable of making sure that absolutely nothing is going to happen to him.

“Hey,” the man eventually says, and his voice strikes that same familiar, safe feeling that his face did, though he’s still unable to put a name to either.

Instead of trying, or of badgering his dry throat into speech, he looks around again, this time focusing on his own body, trying to locate the precise reason he’s in a hospital, because it can’t just be a headache. His head gives a particularly sharp throb, and as it fades, he notices another feeling, accompanying the pain.

Something on the back of his head itches. It’s wildly irritating, and his face crumples into an annoyed frown. It takes several moments of concentrating very hard to persuade his uncooperative hand to reach up and feel around for it, trying to get whatever shirt tag is poking him in the scalp away. His fingertips have just barely brushed what feels like gauze, taped to the back of his skull, when the man in the chair makes a disapproving sound, catching his wrist and pulling his hand down with an ease that he, honestly, resents a little bit.

“Hey, no, Buck, don’t touch that.” The words are just this side of chastising, a soft chide that lands in the same area of a parent warning a toddler not to touch a hot stove.

“Rude,” he mutters, because the itching feeling is very much still there and very much still driving him absolutely nuts. The man in the chair chuckles quietly, and reaches over him to grab a small cup from a stand at the side of the bed.

Buck supposes he’s going to forgive him, given he seems about to solve Buck’s throat issue. The man sits back down, the cup in one hand, a bendy straw poking over the rim. He uses his other hand to curve carefully over the side of Buck’s neck, under his head away from the itchy-tag feeling, helping him sit up enough to not choke on the water in the cup. The grip the man has on him is cautious and gentle, and Buck is grateful for it, though it serves as a grim reminder of exactly how wobbly his entire existence is at the present moment.

When he’s drained the small cup of water, the man guides Buck’s head back down to the crinkly, starched hospital pillow. Once Buck is resettled, his companion shifts in his seat, and it seems for a moment like he’s about to get up, maybe leave the room. Something about the thought sends a spike of panic through Buck’s chest, and his hand shoots out to try and halt the departure.

He must be pretty badly concussed, because he misses by about a mile, hand swiping through the empty air as nausea lurches in his stomach and his head spins. 

“Hey.” His voice is just as calm and reassuring as it was the first time he spoke, and now one of those hands that had helped Buck with the water is on his forearm, warm against his chilled skin. Grounding. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m just hitting the call button. Nurse said to call when you woke up. I’m not leaving.”

Buck lets his eyes squeeze closed, the lights like spokes driving into his aching head. He twists his arm until he can return the grip the man sitting with him has on his wrist, fingers twisted in the fabric of the flannel shirt he thinks he remembers being blue. A moment later he risks cracking one eye open, just to be sure. 

It is blue, predominantly. Blue and grey. Buck is more comforted by having remembered this while his eyes were closed than he probably should be. It was only a few seconds.

When the nurse walks in, she dims the lights somewhat, a fact for which Buck is so grateful he basically owes her a life-debt. He’s able to actually open his eyes now, without squinting, and thus is able to see the two people that follow the nurse into the room. The pair is a woman and a man, dressed in street clothes, and thus unlikely to be medical staff. 

As Buck is in the middle of piecing together a question to try and figure out what these seemingly random people are doing in his hospital room, the nurse interrupts. She stands beside the bed, opposite where the man sits in his chair, and looks at him with an unreadably polite expression. 

“Sir, you’ve had a head injury. You’re in the hospital.” She presses a few buttons and the bed shifts, whirring softly beneath him as it lifts him into a semi-sitting position. Buck doesn’t lose his grip on the flannel shirt, and the man’s hand doesn’t leave his arm, and he’s glad. 

Beyond the nurse, the new arrivals hover near the foot of the bed, looking at Buck like they’re expecting him to say or do something important. As the nurse checks something on one of the monitors, they exchange a glance, and Buck looks away, back to the woman speaking to him. She’s just asked him a question, and he blinks at her, embarrassed to have missed it entirely.

“Can you tell me what day it is?” the nurse repeats patiently. Her nametag, shifting into view, says Diana. 

“Yeah, it’s…” Buck stops, frowning. He looks from Diana, to the man at his right, and back to her. “It’s, uh.” Well that’s not good. He doesn’t have the faintest idea what day it is. “I don’t know, actually. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Diana says, giving him a small, reassuring smile. “That’s pretty normal, you landed pretty hard when you fell. It’s expected you’d be a little disoriented. Can you tell me your name?”

Okay, this one he definitely does know.

“Buck,” he says confidently. “It’s Buck.”

Another glance exchanged between the strange people at the end of the bed, and the grip on his forearm tightens noticeably. Buck feels the anxiety that’s been buzzing in his chest behind everything leap into the foreground. He looks at the man next to him, whose expression has gone grim in a new way entirely, and Buck really wants him to stop making that face. For lack of being able to figure out how to make _that_ happen, Buck returns his attention to the nurse. She’s frowning too, though her frown makes him feel markedly less guilty than the man’s.

“Can you tell me your _first_ name?” Diana asks, carefully specific in a way that makes him go cold. 

“Is-” He stops, swallows hard. Wishes he had more water. Hopes he’s not bruising the arm underneath the flannel sleeve he’s holding onto harder every moment. “Is Buck not my first name?”

“Okay,” Diana mutters under her breath. It doesn’t answer Buck’s question, but before he can repeat himself, she looks past him, to the man on his right. “Okay, Buck, can you tell me who he is?” She’s pointing now, right across, and Buck looks over at the only other person who’s been here the entire time. 

In all the time he’s been awake in this room, that’s something Buck hasn’t actually given a great deal of thought to. He may be a little rattled, brain-wise, may not be able to remember what day it is, might be slightly hazy on his name, but he’s a decently smart person, and he can put facts together with context clues and figure a few things out. 

The man is older than him, was sitting with him waiting for him to wake up in the hospital. Held his head up while he drank the water, sat here and basically held Buck’s hand while he tries to get his wits about him enough to remember his own name. It adds up, these facts, and the way Buck felt when he looked over and saw him there, realized that this was somebody he was completely safe with. Protected by.

“Yeah. That’s my dad, right?”

The woman at the end of the bed, the one in street clothes, makes a choking sound, throwing a hand over her mouth to stifle… laughter? The man who’d come in with her is abruptly smiling, eyes glinting with mirth, and he says, “Well, I _mean,_ you’re not _totally_ wrong, Bobby’s-”

“Guys.” The man - _Bobby?_ _Not Buck’s dad, then?_ \- has raised his voice, and it’s a little shocking to hear it above that gentle, reassuring murmur, a warning rebuke. 

“Buck.” Diana the nurse has his attention again, and Buck’s starting to feel dizzy, focus pinging around. “I need you to stay with me for a moment. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Okay. Okay, he can do this. He can focus, as soon as the pounding in his head dies down, he’ll be able to focus, and then he can remember what happened, and who these people are, and who _he_ is, and they can all go home and it’ll be _fine._ Except… Except the harder he thinks, the more nothing he runs up against, empty space where memory and information should be. 

Buck can’t remember. It’s not just how he got here, not just the name of the man who’d been there since he woke up, not just whoever the hell these people at the end of his bed are. He can’t remember _anything._ Not even, apparently, his own first name.

It’s only when the back of the hospital bed starts going down again, Diana’s voice accompanying the whir of the motor, that Buck realizes he’s having some kind of panic attack. He tries to stop it, to will his heart to slow down as the monitor screeches warnings in his ears, force his chest to stop heaving with frantic breaths, but it’s to no avail. The enormity of it, the chasm left behind by everything that should be there, feels like it’s going to swallow him alive.

“Buck.”

The voice cuts through, joining Diana’s. It’s that same voice that had first given him his name back to begin with, steady and calm and loud enough to make it through the panic and the wild beeping of the heart monitor. Bobby says his name again, and this time it’s accompanied by a squeeze of his forearm. Buck squeezes back, fingers digging hard enough now that he’s sure he’s going to leave a mark. He’d feel guilty if he could feel anything but terrified.

“Buck, you need to breathe.” Bobby’s other hand covers Buck’s clutching one, warming his shaking fingers. “Come on, kid, we need you to calm down and _breathe._ In and out. That’s all you have to do. In,” he says it slowly, and Buck clings to the word with all his might, forcing his lungs to draw in a deep breath, exhaling as Bobby guides, “Out.”

They repeat the process several times, until the monitor slows to a normal pace, and Buck feels way less like he’s about to pass out. His head throbs, and he still can’t remember a single thing beyond the last fifteen minutes, but he’s something approaching calm, and it’s a start.

Over the next couple of hours, Buck lives through a blur of tests and doctors and his room’s three strangers explaining who the hell they all are. He finds out that his name is Evan Buckley, which would definitely explain the nickname Bobby had called him. He’s twenty-six years old, and he’s a firefighter in Los Angeles, California. Bobby is Bobby Nash, his station captain, and the man and woman who’d come in with the nurse are Chimney and Hen, who work with them at the 118. 

A small earthquake, not bad enough to cause property damage but bad enough to knock a person off a roof if it happened at exactly the wrong moment, is what’s landed him here. According to Bobby, nobody else was hurt. A teenager got stuck on a roof going for a frisbee, and had already been brought to safety when the quake threw Buck twelve feet to the ground and the rock that gifted him four stitches and a case of retrograde amnesia.

The tests come back mostly clean, meaning there’s no massive brain bleed about to kill him at any moment, though this is minimally reassuring to Buck, who wouldn’t honestly preferred that, because that could be fixed. What they’re left with instead is some vague medical-ese about swelling and how this is, really, an extremely rare outcome. 

The doctor sounds kind of fascinated, which serves to irritate Buck further. He says it should likely clear up on its own as his brain heals itself - the brain, Dr. Rochester says, is a miraculous thing nobody truly understands. The other option, though, the one that sticks in Buck’s mind, pinging around all that empty space, is the version where he doesn’t get his memory back at all. It’s possible, Dr. Rochester said after a bit of prodding. 

“No need to worry yet, it’s way too soon for that,” he’s quick to add, when Buck’s expression gets grimmer and grimmer. “Give it some time. There’s no need for you to stay here, you’re a very lucky young man, aside from the obvious, just the concussion and some bruising. Try and spend some time in familiar places, doing familiar things. If your headache gets suddenly a lot worse, or you notice you’re bleeding from your ears or nose or anything like that, come back right away.”

“Bleeding,” Buck repeats faintly. He feels sicker than he had since he’d just woke up, and he wishes he’d asked Bobby to stay when the doctor came to give him the final verdict. “From my ears or nose.”

“Unlikely, but be aware just in case,” the doctor says, in the same neutral voice he’s been speaking in for most of this conversation - except for the part where he was talking about all of the ways in which Buck is a mystery of medical science.

“Right. Be aware. Sure.”

“Is there someone you can stay with? You probably shouldn’t be alone tonight, with the memory loss, it would be disorienting.”

Though some of the first hour or so after he woke up has gone hazy now, something Dr. Rochester assures him is completely normal, Buck does remember the part where Bobby told him that he lives with roommates.

“Yeah,” he says numbly. 

Hen is the one who ends up driving him home. She talks as she drives, stuff about the other calls they went out on earlier that week, maybe trying to jog his memory, maybe just trying to fill the silence Buck can feel pressing in around them, pressing out inside his own mind, echoing around all that empty space. His head feels like an abandoned mansion, rooms and halls gutted of furniture and photographs, any trace of life cored out. 

They pull up outside a decently sized house with a tennis racket and a soccer ball in the front yard, and what looks to be a red converse sneaker without its mate in sight. Buck takes it all in, eyes flicking from the sidewalk, to the shoe, to the front door, and out around, studying everything he can see. 

“Anything look familiar at all? Anything you recognize?” Hen asks from where she sits in the driver’s seat. The car idles under them as Buck tries to focus, to see if he knows who that shoe belongs to, if it might be his, if he knows the feeling of those front steps as he leaves for work or comes home from a night out.

“No,” he says, honestly. The word comes out uncertain and quiet, and Buck feels very small. Los Angeles looms out around them in all directions, this woman he feels like he should know so well a stranger beside him, his house in front of him striking not a single spark of recall in his hollowed out mind. “I don’t recognize anything.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOODNESS I fell off the face of the earth didn't I? So sorry guys, I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'd love to hear from you if you did!!
> 
> (Chapters updated from 4 to 5 due to a scene ballooning out of control and pushing

> _ I don't wanna know who I am _
> 
> _ Cause heaven only knows what I'll find _
> 
> _ \- Mother Mother, "Alright" _

Hen takes the lead up the walkway to the house, and Buck is glad - he doesn’t really want to take the lead on anything right now, not when he genuinely couldn’t even identify what street they’re standing on at the moment. She doesn’t really talk on their way up to the front door, and Buck wonders why, if maybe Hen is just a quiet person or if she doesn’t know his roommates well enough to make small talk about them. 

Buck, obviously, definitely doesn’t. He doesn’t even know how many roommates he has or what their names are, and the yawning void of uncertainty waiting for him behind that door lends a shyness to his steps. He lags even farther behind Hen, feeling like he’s dragging his legs through quick-dry concrete, keeping her between himself and the door. 

At this point he can barely pick her out of a lineup, but Hen is exactly one of three people he even vaguely knows at all, and besides. He’s got a feeling about her, not quite the same one he’d had when he’d woken up and seen Bobby sitting beside his bed in the hospital, but a similar kind of feeling. It’s the kind of feeling that tells her that she’s a safe person to be around, someone who can serve as an anchor point in his unmoored, question filled reality. So, yeah. Dogged by the prickle of anxious nerves and the weight of everything he doesn’t know, Buck stays behind Hen.

After a walk from the car that feels simultaneously like it took forever and like he’d blinked and it was over, Hen stops at the door, bringing Buck staggering to a halt behind her. A wave of dizziness has come over him at approximately that moment, which is why he’s not entirely aware of Hen bending down and fishing around until she pulls a key out of a half-dead potted plant. As she opens the front door, Buck steadies himself on the porch railing and tries to plaster a friendly smile across his face. If he’s going to be making a first impression on the people he apparently lives with, he wants it to be a good one.

It doesn’t turn out to be necessary. Hen pulls the door open, stops dead in her tracks, says, “Oh hell no,” out loud, and then immediately closes it again.

To say that Buck is confused would be wildly understating things.

“Is this…” He blinks around, craning his neck to get a look at the numbers next to the door. The headache that’s persisted since he woke up pounds harder when he leans back, and Buck winces. “Is this the wrong house?”

Snorting, Hen doesn’t even finish her answer before she’s taking him by the shoulders and bodily turning him around, shepherding him back towards the car. The explanation she gives as they walk is, “Yeah, no, no way in hell am I letting you go home to that after you about split your head open this morning. Not happening.”

“What’s wrong?” Buck asks. Hen opens the passenger’s side of the car and guides him into the seat, stopping short of actually reaching over him to clip the seatbelt herself, a small mercy for which he is grateful. “Is everybody out of town, or?”

“Nah,” she says, then rounds the car and gets into her own side. She doesn’t start it right away, instead fishing her phone out of her jacket pocket and tapping at the screen, sending someone a text message. “Let’s just say it doesn’t look like a good environment for rest and recovery. When you told us your roommates were jocks, I didn’t quite understand exactly how…” At this point, Hen looks up, abandoning her text to wave her fingers out the window, back towards the house. “Frat-y it actually was in there.”

“Oh,” is all Buck says in response. Truth be told, he doesn’t really understand her point. Does he actually live in a frat house? The lack of Greek letters on the outside of the building would indicate not, and it’s a moment of acute, almost laughable frustration that he realizes he has somehow retained the factual information of what a fraternity is, but  _ not _ whether or not he might live in one. 

There’s a short, muted buzz indicating she’s gotten a reply to her text, and Hen looks down. She grins at whatever she sees, then starts the car.

“Okay,” Hen says as they pull away from the curb. “Change of plans. Since you live in some college boy nightmare house, I’m taking you to Chim’s instead.”

One unrecognizable street gives way to another as Hen navigates residential Los Angeles. Buck shifts in his seat, looking away from the window. Trying to focus on anything going on outside is going to drive him off the deep end if he keeps trying to pick out landmarks, street names, anything at all he might recognize. 

“I’d just take you back to my place,” Hen continues, “but Karen - that’s my wife, Karen, our son is named Denny - is in a meeting and I don’t want to show up with a plus-one without checking in, y’know? So we’re gonna swing you ‘round to Chimney’s place, he’s setting up the futon for you.” She stops at a red light, fingers tapping a rapid pattern against the steering wheel. It’s the only indication that something is out of the ordinary here, that this isn’t just any old day in the car with a friend. Everything about her demeanor is calm and collected, but that tapping still gives her away, fast and agitated.

Something uncomfortable and maybe guilty squeezes in Buck’s chest and he looks down at his own hands. There’s a small scar on the knuckle of his index finger, and it goes without saying he can’t remember how it got there. 

“You really don’t, like…” Buck trails off, shrugging, wishing he remembered anything that could help him put together if this is something they would normally do for him or if this is pity talking. “I’ll be fine, if you want to take me back to-”

“Absolutely not,” Hen says firmly, cutting him off before he can finish the suggestion. “On account of the whole amnesia thing I’m gonna give you a pass on even thinking I would leave you there by yourself with people you yourself have told me you barely know, who were playing  _ beer pong _ at five o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday. Even if the doctor hadn’t told told us not to leave you alone, that’s a place to party, not to recover from a major head injury.”

“Oh,” is all Buck comes up with to say in response, for the second time in the last ten minutes. He feels like he’s learned more about himself and his life in that one almost-sharp response than he has in most of the hours since he woke up not knowing any of it. 

So, he and his roommates aren’t close then. The way she’d described it had struck him oddly - ‘people you yourself have told me you barely know’. Buck isn’t sure who that says more about, his roommates or himself. 

“How did I meet them?” he asks eventually. Hen takes her eyes off the road for a split second, just long enough to glance over at him, then immediately refocuses. 

“Meet who?”

“My roommates.” It feels awkward to ask, but Buck figures he’d probably better get used to it. Asking Hen how he’d met his roommates is probably the least of his concerns, when it comes to asking questions about the kind of thing you shouldn’t have to ask other people to tell you. 

Once he clarifies, there’s a long moment of hesitation that Buck can’t make heads or tails of before she eventually answers.

“Craigslist,” is what she says, short and carefully scrubbed of any intonation, though there’s a twitch at the corner of her mouth that indicates she finds this to be both entertaining and regrettable. “I remember when you told us that, I’m pretty sure Bobby about had a heart attack. Chimney asked if you’d ever seen Dateline in your life, and you asked him what Dateline was.”

Apparently, what that says about him is he’s the type of person who finds roommates on Craigslist. Buck isn’t quite sure how to feel about that, but he can’t help the small smile that forms. It’s an amusing thought, really, and either he must have been poking fun at Chimney or Chimney must have explained, given Buck does in fact know what Dateline is now. 

That’s been an odd facet of this whole amnesia thing. Buck seems to have retained most general information, facts, things about the world and the way things work in it, it’s just anything personal he’s lost. He’s a blank slate of a fully formed person, who knows how to tie his shoes and what Dateline is but not how he met his roommates or whether he’s seeing anyone. He spends the rest of the drive trying very hard not to think about it, while Hen tells him what she knows about his roommates - not much, she thinks they’re college students, nice enough, but they aren’t really friends.

“Beer pong?” is what Chimney says when he opens the front door to his apartment. He’s got one eyebrow raised high, and Buck notices for the first time a tiny red ‘x’ that dots his forehead, a birthmark, or maybe a scar. Buck catches himself staring and looks deliberately way, gaze landing somewhere between the hallway’s wall and floor. 

“Beer pong,” Hen solemnly confirms, ushering Buck around her and towards the threshold of the apartment with a firm but gentle grip on his upper arm. “Alright, you two try not to burn anything down tonight, and I mean, I guess if you do then at least you know who to call.”

And then she’s gone, and Buck is alone in the front entryway of Chimney’s apartment, wishing Hen would come back. They hadn’t been alone for too long, but it had been longer than he’d been alone with any of the others, and it had definitely been long enough for him to get more used to her than anyone else he’s ‘met’. It feels awkward, to be standing here with this friend he doesn’t know, in an apartment he doesn’t recognize though odds are he’s been here before. 

Luckily, Chimney either isn’t feeling the same pressure of awkwardness that Buck is suffocating under or he’s really good at pretending, because after a few uncomfortable moments where they stand around not talking, he snaps out of it. Moving away from the door, Chimney starts talking over his shoulder, motioning for Buck to follow him. Just a moment’s pause, and then Buck is doing as he’s told. 

Chimney explains as he walks that he’s got the futon set up, and Bobby swung by earlier with a duffel bag of his clothes from the station. Apparently, they all keep them there, and Buck’s is sitting next to the opened out futon now, full of clothes he couldn’t identify as his if his life depends on it. 

It’s starting to feel redundant, looking around and identifying all the things he knows he should recognize, knows should spark at least the hint of familiarity in his mind, but don’t even for a moment. He can’t help it though - everything is new, right now, every corner Buck turns around hides another piece of his life he can’t fit into a puzzle with a missing picture. The only thing he feels even remotely like he knows are these three people, these friends he made at work, and it’s a complete reliance that sets him off-balance. 

There’s no way Chimney misses the way Buck acting, his odd quiet and darting eyes, but it seems to roll off the older man entirely. He conducts himself like things are completely normal - or at least, what Buck assumes is completely normal for Chimney. The TV is turned on, a stack of DVDs set on the coffee table, and a takeout menu next to it.

“These movies are some of your favorites,” Chimney says, flopping down to sit on the extended futon and leaning against what usually functions at the back of the couch. “I’ve got some questions about your taste, but some of ‘em are decent. And that’s your favorite pizza place, there, I called them when Hen texted me, ordered your usual - which is absolutely disgusting, by the way, it’s basically a crime, but y’know, maybe it’ll help you call some stuff up. They say sense memory is really powerful.”

Instead of saying anything, because now all of his words seem to have fled his mind as well, and there’s a lump in his throat, Buck just nods. He walks over and sits down next to Chimney, moving much more slowly and carefully thanks to his concussed, aching head. All he really wants to do is take a shower and go to bed, but he’s not supposed to get his stitches wet for another day at minimum, and he’s already spent a lot of today sleeping. 

So he sits on the futon next to Chimney and watches the movie and, letting it wash over him, trying not to try too hard to remember it as one of his favorites. Buck figures maybe trying so hard is making his memory clam up even tighter, that maybe it’ll be easier if he stops trying at all. Nothing comes up, but he does enjoy the movie quite a bit, so that has to be something. Maybe twenty minutes in, Chimney goes downstairs to get the pizza from the delivery driver, and again, Buck enjoys it, but it doesn’t help him remember anything.

By the time they’re halfway through the next movie, Buck is exhausted, his head is throbbing, and he’s beyond frustrated. The reality of his situation feels as if it’s pressing down on him heavier and heavier by the moment, and it doesn’t escape Buck at all that were it not for the grace of his friends - his  _ coworkers _ from the station, he’d be completely lost in a world he doesn’t know.

Evidently a perceptive person, Chimney pauses the movie before Buck realizes he’s reached for the remote at all. 

“You look pretty beat,” is all Chimney says, voice light and easy. “I can’t remember the last time you were this quiet for this long, probably means your head hurts. Why don’t we call it a night, huh? Everything’ll still be here when you wake up.”

_ Easy for you to say, _ Buck thinks.  _ Last time I woke up, everything was gone. _

Not waiting for much of a response, Chimney gets up and turns the TV off, leaving Buck to get settled as he moves about the apartment, conducting his night-time routine. Or, what Buck assumes is his night-time routine. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been here before to see it, not that he’d remember if he had. Chimney is just moving towards the hallway, hand going for the light switch, when Buck thinks of something. 

It sparks into his mind with the subtlety of a firecracker, and he blurts out, “Has anyone called my parents?”

The question stops Chimney in his tracks. He turns and looks at Buck with an expression of guarded confusion that isn’t a reassuring indicator. 

“Your parents,” Chimney repeats, and Buck nods.

“I mean, they probably know everything about me, right? So we get them here, and I can look at, I dunno, pictures from when I was a kid and maybe that’ll help. There’s gotta be something more I can do than just… Sit here and watch movies.”

“You told us not to call them.” Of all the things Chimney could’ve said then, Buck wasn’t expecting that in the slightest. Before he can ask what the hell that means, Chimney elaborates. He walks back into the living room, leaning against the door frame with his hands in his pockets and an odd look on his face. “Early on, you made it pretty clear you didn’t ever want them called, no matter what. I don’t have their number, I don’t even think Bobby does, and if he does, he’s not gonna use it. Not after you told him not to.”

Static buzzes in Buck’s ears, and he clears his throat. “Do you know why?” He regrets asking the question a second after it comes out, realizing too late that maybe the answer might not be something he wants to hear, not in this state. The list of reasons one could make an ultimatum like that is long and bad. 

“I don’t,” is Chimney’s answer, and Buck is both relieved and disappointed. “You don’t… You don’t talk about them, really. Ever.”

“What about the rest of my family?” As he asks the question, Buck feels numb and cold. “Do I- Do I talk about them at all?”

“You’ve got a sister, I think.” It’s clear that Chimney is doing his best to keep his voice casual but there’s a helpless awkwardness about it that Buck feels replicated tenfold in his own chest. “She’s a lot older than you, last I heard you don’t talk much.” 

“Oh.” Buck is beginning to feel like a broken record, like he’s been hollowed out and the only thing left in him are questions and the word ‘oh’. He shifts a little, picks at a loose thread on the blanket covering his legs. “So just… Just to be clear, here, I’ve got roommates I met on Craigslist that I barely know, a sister I don’t talk to, and parents I don’t talk about. That’s. That’s just great. I sound like I’ve got a lot going for me.”

It’s impossible to keep the bitterness out of his voice, and if it weren’t for everything that’s happened today, Buck would feel bad about the petulant tone. He figures he’s earned a little childish wallowing, given the last twelve hours. 

“You left a part out, there, Buck.” The voice is almost startling, like Buck had forgotten he wasn’t alone in that room. That this is someone else’s apartment, and that person is not fifteen feet away, looking at him with a slight smile like what he’s saying is easy and simple. Obvious. “You’ve got us. You’ve got the one-eighteen.” Chimney walks over and his hand is heavy and warm on Buck’s shoulder, squeezing tight. “Parents aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, trust me, I get that a little  _ too _ well, but family… Don’t think for a second you don’t have that, okay?”

“Okay,” Buck breathes. His head throbs and his eyes burn and he tells himself it’s because of the concussion, that the drugs he’s been prescribed to take away some of the pain from his fall are what’s leaving him so off-kilter, like he might break down at any moment. 

And because he doesn’t know any better, he figures he’ll just have to take Chimney’s word for it. 

The light goes out, and Buck squeezes his eyes tight shut. There’s something in him that doesn’t want to be left alone in the dark, not after what he’s learned, not when there’s a churning feeling in his chest he can hardly swallow around. Eventually, though, his eyes crack open, and his focus is drawn to something.

The living room isn’t dark. There’s a soft glow coming from the floor, spreading a soft yellow light up the wall. A nightlight, plugged into an electrical outlet. Buck looks at it for a long time, and when sleep comes, it comes gently. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome folks to 'gav makes up a bunch of stuff about what the interior of hen's house and bobby's apartment are like'! welcome folks also to 'i'm not dead sorry it took me a hundred years to update this'. hopefully the fact that it's a fair sight longer than the first two will help make up for that.
> 
> anyways!! if you're still here, thank you. i'd love to hear from you if you are. <3

_I don't wanna know who I am_

_Cause heaven only knows what I'd find_

_\- Mother Mother, "Alright"_

After two nights at Chimney’s place, Buck finds himself passed on to Hen. Chimney drives, chattering the entire way, about everything and nothing all at once. Somewhere in the midst of it he mentions that Hen now ‘gets to have her turn’ with him, and as if somehow sensing exactly the cringing, guilty thought that sprung into Buck’s mind upon hearing this, immediately continues with, “You know she was never gonna let me get away with keeping you all to myself. Can’t hog our favorite Bourne Identity protagonist, me and Hen and Bobby have joint custody, it just wouldn’t be fair.” 

There’s an easy grin on Chimney’s face like he’s talking just to talk, but there’s also something knowing in the look he shoots at Buck out of the corner of his eye at the next red light. It gives the impression that he’d said what he’d said for a pointed reason, like he’d known exactly what Buck had taken ‘her turn’ to mean. While Buck had gone straight to ‘her turn to be stuck with him’, Chimney course-corrected immediately to ‘her turn to get to spend time with him’, like that was some kind of valued commodity. The distinction sparks something warm in Buck’s chest and he looks out the window, hoping it’s not too obvious on his face.

The hand-off is executed without a hitch, Buck passed from Chimney’s metaphorical custody and into that of Hen and her wife, Karen. He’s introduced to Karen, waving and smiling awkwardly at her, saying, “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” It was an instinct born of the uncomfortable, unsteady ground Buck feels like he’s standing on, defaulting to the most placatingly respectful form of address he can think of.

“Ma’am?  _ Ma’am?” _ The response, shocked and slightly amused, indicates they have most definitely met before, and this is  _ not _ what Buck is generally supposed to call his coworker slash friend’s wife. She shakes her head and frowns at him with a combination of amusement and unnerved surprise, like she hadn’t quite believed what she’d been told about his memory being gone  _ completely _ until just now, and says, “I’m not  _ that _ much older than you.”

“Sorry, what, uh…” Buck clears his throat. “What do I usually call you?” He’s  _ got _ to get used to this, to asking these kinds of questions. It’s been essentially three days since his injury and his memory shows no sign of returning. Until it does, he can’t trip over the question every time he has to ask someone basic information about himself or their relationship. 

“Karen,” she tells him, the answer simply presented and without any of the stilting inflection the inquiry had held. “Come on in, we’ll get you set up in the spare room.”

The spare room in the Wilson house is nice, the bedspread comfortable and neatly made over the mattress. There’s a duffel on a chair that Hen points out, saying that she’d gone back to his house and retrieved some of his clothes and things while he was still at Chimney’s apartment. He thanks her absently, still looking around, searching for something familiar, trying to figure out if he’s ever stayed in this spare room before. Just like every other time he’s exercised that particular instinct in the last few days, it yields no results save for frustration and negative space, and Buck shakes his head, dismissing it and feeling foolish for having tried at all.

Since the hospital-prescribed waiting period has passed, Buck is allowed to get his head wet now. He’s not supposed to soak his stitches but he’s at least permitted to wash his hair, and he spends a long time just standing under the hot water, trying to let go of the tense ache in his muscles, built up over the last three days. By the time he’s out, dressed in clothes Hen retrieved from his house, dinner is well underway, and Hen and Karen’s son is home from his after-school program. 

Denny is a good kid, who looks at Buck with wide, curious eyes when they ‘meet’ in the living room. Buck smiles at him and tries to look normal, whatever his normal looks like. He’s not quite sure what, exactly, Denny has been told about what’s going on with him, and he’s not about to be the one to reveal more than the boy’s supposed to know. 

“You really don’t remember  _ anything _ at all?” It’s blunt and to the point, Denny’s voice fascinated and baffled, and Hen’s head snaps up from where she’d been stowing her son’s backpack in the hallway closet.

“Denny,” she says, sharp and rebuking, cringing apologetically at Buck. 

“It’s okay,” Buck tells her, then turns his attention back to Denny. It’s kind of refreshing, honestly, that there’s at least one person who isn’t tiptoeing around his condition, the swiss cheese that’s been made of his mind, his identity. “Nothing at all,” he says, shrugging. “They had to tell me what my name was at the hospital.”

“Wow.” Denny responds, eyebrows up high. Rather than scared or uncomfortable, he seems impressed and interested, which is definitely preferable to what Buck had been half-expecting. Before he can ask anything more, he’s quickly distracted by a sound from the kitchen, darting in to see what Karen is doing.

“Sorry about that,” says Hen when he’s out of earshot, shaking her head. “We told him not to ask any rude questions, but y’know… Kids. If you don’t want to talk about it, you can just tell him, he knows not to bother people when they don’t like to answer questions about something.”

“It really is okay.” And, somewhat surprisingly, Buck is telling the truth. He hadn’t known what it would be like to actually get directly questioned about what was going on with him, Chimney, Hen, and Karen thus far taking the approach of letting him guide conversations on the topic. “It’s gotta be weird for him, if I was a kid I’d probably ask.”

“Well, if you’re sure. Just tell him to knock it off when you’re tired of it. You know, he’s really excited you’re staying,” Hen tells him, smiling a little and looking in the direction her son’s run off to, chattering faintly in the background with her wife. It’s an excruciating domestic sound, and the pause in the conversation is just long enough that Buck feels a sharp squeeze in his heart. It’s like his body itself knows he’s not supposed to be here, that he’s a strange, lost interloper, interrupting something safe and calm and stable. 

Throughout dinner, there’s enough steady, idle chatter that Buck isn’t left in his thoughts for long enough for the feeling to return. Denny talks endlessly about his day, his school, his friends, the snake the local zoo’s reptile keeper brought in for a hands-on learning day. Hen looks faintly ill at that part of the conversation, and Buck seizes ahold of that piece of information, filing it possessively away with all of the other tidbits he’s managed to collect about the people he apparently spends the most time with. Hen doesn’t like snakes.

After dinner, Buck doesn’t know what to do with himself. Denny takes off after being excused to do his homework, and he hovers uncertainly in the doorway of the kitchen, until spotting the sink, filling up slowly as Hen brings dishes in from the dining room. He walks over and turns the faucet on, grabbing a green and yellow sponge off the edge of the sink and starting to clean the plates. Footsteps sound as Hen brings in a set of water glasses, but they don’t retreat like he was expecting. When she is still and silent for long enough that something has obviously interrupted her clean-up routine, Buck pauses, glancing to the side. 

Hen, standing by the counter, is regarding him with an odd expression, contemplative and soft in a way Buck can’t quite describe.

“What?” he asks, unable to help the hint of reflexive defensiveness that creeps into the word.

“Nothing,” she says, still smiling slightly at him. 

Unable to bear the gently piercing scrutiny of her attention directly any longer, Buck turns back to what he’s doing. The plate he was washing is clean now, and he looks around for what to do with it. His hands, clutching the water-heated ceramic, are wet and soapy, unhelpful for the next step of this process. It’s in looking for some kind of drying rack or towel that he catches sight of the dishwasher, built very obviously into the cupboard maybe five feet away from where he currently stands. In his searching need for something constructive to do, Buck has inadvertently created more work for everyone, when he really ought to have just been loading the dishwasher. Before he can apologize or get too deep in that line of thought, someone else’s hands come into view, warm brown passing over pale peach to take the plate from him.

A towel set on the counter on her right, Hen is now standing right next to him. She dries the dish wordlessly, putting it away in the cupboard, then holds her palm out expectantly. Together, they wash and dry the dishes, nothing to break the calm quiet of the room save the running of the water, the sound of Karen humming along to the radio out in the other room. The water is pleasantly hot and the routine of cleaning the dishes and passing them off to Hen is soothing and Buck loses track of time. It feels like before they’ve hardly begun, they’re finished, and he’s draining the sink while Hen wipes down the errant spatters of water and soap that have escaped during their process. 

“Can we keep him?” The question comes abruptly, Karen’s voice sounding from the kitchen doorway, flatly serious, but her eyes, when Buck looks over, contain a twinkle of mirth. Hen snorts and when Buck looks back at her, she’s shaking her head, laughing. “Look, I’m just saying. He does dishes, babe. Buck,” Karen says, now addressing him directly, “if this whole firefighter thing doesn’t work out, how would you feel about live-in nanny?”

“I’ll send you my resume,” Buck says tentatively, unsure if this is something he usually does, if theirs is the kind of relationship he can tease in. Seems to him, your friend’s wife could poke fun at you, but poking fun back might not be the best bet. The risk is rewarded when Karen’s wide smile crinkles her eyes and Hen chokes on another laugh.

In the hour that follows, Denny Wilson very quickly moves very high up on Buck’s list of favorite people - a list admittedly extremely short at the moment, limited severely by the fact that he doesn’t really  _ know _ any people, at least any who aren’t Chimney, Bobby, or the Wilsons. For the most part, Denny is treating him like everything is completely normal, like he’s got a cool firefighter over at his house, which is the peak of excitement at his age, even when your mom is one too. Sometimes he asks questions, about Buck’s memory, his injuries, but they’re direct and curious. Like this one. 

“Does your head hurt?” the kid asks without looking up from what he’s doing. 

He’s sprawled out on his stomach on the living room carpet, brightly colored plastic bricks scattered around him, sorted into various piles. The instructions for the Lego firehouse he and Buck are now building together are spread across Buck’s lap, where he sits cross-legged, facing Denny. Glancing up, then looking back down, Buck shrugs. 

He answers the question with the same casual ease Denny asked it with, saying, “Yeah. Not as much as it did at first, though. I hit it pretty hard.”

“That sucks,” Denny says solemnly, and Buck nods, the corner of his mouth twitching up faintly.

“Yeah, it does.” 

They work on the Lego set for a while longer, until it’s time for Denny to go to bed. He does so with only minor protests, and as Karen leaves with him upstairs, Hen comes out into the living room. She leans on the wall by the doorway, doesn’t say anything for several long moments. Buck looks down at his hands, gathering the Lego pieces up into a plastic tub. He puts the half-finished structure in last, lifting it with slow, careful movements to avoid breaking it apart. It wouldn’t be right, to destroy his and Denny’s evening of hard work. 

“You’re the one that gave that to him, you know. The Lego firehouse set.”

Buck looks up at that, making eye contact with Hen. A light frown takes up residence on his face, and he tries not to seem too eager for it, any amount of insight into his life, information about what kind of person he is. 

“I am?” He’s proud of the way his voice doesn’t shake, though his mouth is dry and his fingers have stilled completely on the lid of the Lego storage tub. 

Nodding, Hen walks farther into the room and sits on the couch, next to Buck’s shoulder. “Yeah. He’s been waiting to put it together until you came over, you promised to do it with him. You were gonna come over sometime next week, actually, so when Den found out you were coming tonight instead, he was ecstatic.” There’s a pause, and her face is so fond that Buck has to turn away from it. “Kids love you. It’s kind of funny to watch, honestly, you’re like the pied freakin’ piper with them. Chim and I tease you about it, say it’s because they know you’re one of them.”

There’s mirth in her voice, light and happy. Buck’s chest feels the same, and his laugh bubbles up in his lungs, joining hers. It’s an odd feeling, to consciously realize this is the first time you can remember laughing.

Nobody drops him off when the next switch happens. Bobby comes to the Wilson house to pick him up. Walking to the car with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Buck feels like a kid being picked up after a sleepover. Once actually in the car, the a talk radio station playing quietly in the background and Bobby driving next to him, Buck feels oddly shy. His head hangs low, chin knocking against his chest when the vehicle hits a crack in the pavement, and though he searches, he doesn’t find anything to say. All he finds are questions he doesn’t ask, despite the fact that Bobby seems like the kind of person who has answers.

What do we talk about? Do we talk at all when it’s not about work? Why did I forbid you from contacting my parents? Do I want to know? Is this what I’m normally like, or am I somebody you don’t recognize? Do you think I’m ever going to remember?

What’s going to happen to me if I don’t?

It’s a nondescript apartment complex they end up parked outside of, Bobby greeting one or two of his neighbors on the way inside. He holds the door for a woman who ends up entering the apartment across the hall from the one they stop at, and she gives Buck a friendly nod too, which brings about yet more questions - Are you just a friendly person? Or do you recognize me?

The inside of Bobby’s apartment itself is on the small side but overall pretty nice. Buck likes the decor, mainly calm shades of blue and grey, with an old but comfortable looking couch taking up a wall in the modest living room already set up with blankets and pillows. It doesn’t seem to pull out like the one he’d slept on at Chimney’s place had, but it looks like the cushions are already deep enough and soft enough that it won’t matter. 

Setting his duffel carefully down next to the couch-turned-temporary-bed, Buck looks around again, and then over his shoulder at Bobby, who is depositing his keys in a dish by the door.

“It’s a nice place, I like it,” he says, feeling ridiculous the moment after it leaves his mouth. It’s a truly pathetic, empty thing to say to somebody who you’re at the very least close enough to that he’s willing to sign up on the ‘babysitting amnesiac Buck’ roster. Bobby doesn’t seem to have noticed the inadequacy of the first thing Buck has found to say since they were left alone together, instead taking his own survey of his apartment.

“I should hope so, you helped me get it set up like this.”

It’s a piece of information that startles Buck, unable to help the reflexive, “What? I did?” that comes out of his mouth, absolutely baffled. At least that explains why he’s taken such an instant, approving stance on how things look, in a more specific way than he had in either Chimney or Hen’s places of residence.

“It was in a bad way for a while,” Bobby says in explanation, something odd about his tone of voice. His expression has gone strange as well, distant and contemplative like maybe he isn’t just talking about the apartment. This theory is confirmed when he takes his focus off the walls and carpeting, the furniture and books stacked on the kitchen counter, and looks over at Buck. “So was I. This place and me, we were both a mess. You helped. You all did, but you especially. You were really insistent that my apartment needed fixing, so I have curtains now, and they match my lamp.”

The curtains do indeed match the lamp, Buck notes. Getting focused on this distracts him from the lump in his throat for about five seconds, and then it’s all he can think about, everything present in and missing from that sentence. Bobby doesn’t explain what he’d meant by that, when he’d said he’d been a mess, and Buck doesn’t push him on it. He’s got at least some grasp of tact, or at least he hopes he does, and besides. He’s supposed to already know. Whatever it was, he’d been there for it, and Bobby shouldn’t have to explain whatever had been wrong with him all over again just because Buck can’t remember. 

Maybe it’s still going on, and here Buck is, memory a whiteboard that’s been erased completely clean, unaware that he’s intruding when Bobby is already having a difficult time. It’s impossible to know for sure, and so Buck is going to have to take it on blind faith that it’s not a problem that he’s here. It’s something he’s had to rely on a lot since the accident. Blind faith. 

Bobby doesn’t leave him a lot of time to get settled, which is probably a good thing. There’s not a lot of settling to do, really, and too much empty space and nothing to fill it with hasn’t exactly been a good thing for Buck these days. Soon enough, they’re both in the kitchen, Bobby rummaging around in drawers and in the fridge, pulling things out and setting them up on the counter. Buck, assessing the items selected, couldn’t for the life of him say what they were intended to make together. 

“Where I’m from,” Bobby tells him as he goes, placing a large glass pan on the cold, dormant stove-top, “there aren’t a lot of occasions in life where it’s not appropriate to make a hotdish. And though I’ve gotten to teach you a lot, this is one thing I hadn’t gotten around to yet. Figured I’d teach you something new, so you wouldn’t have to waste time learning something you were gonna remember anyway.”

It’s the first time anyone has said something like that with such a degree of certainty, firm in the belief that Buck  _ will _ get his memories back, and soon enough that he won’t have to relearn everything in the meantime. Hearing it makes his breath catch a little, and Buck clears his throat, irritated at his own response. He’s been getting oddly emotional and off-balanced by far too much since waking up in the hospital, though he supposes at least part of that can be blamed on the concussion still spreading its effects across his behavior. 

“Where is that, exactly?” he asks, instead of thinking too hard on Bobby teaching him things, on not being able to remember any of it now, on how that feels something akin to having failed. “Where you’re from?”

“Minnesota.”

Buck about chokes. “Minnesota? You’re from  _ Minnesota? _ And you moved  _ here? _ I know Los Angeles has a hockey team, Bobby,” though it’s news to Buck that he knows this, the words coming out of his mouth without thought, “but we don’t have any, like,  _ ice.” _

The laugh he gets in response is more enthusiastic and lasts longer than Buck necessarily thinks is warranted, and he wonders a little bitterly if Bobby is humoring him or trying to make him feel better, until the older man straightens up and tells him, a little breathlessly, “You said,  _ word for word, _ the exact same thing the first time you found that out.” A long ten seconds while Bobby gets his breathing back under control, resuming his goal of organizing ingredients on the counter, and then he says, “You’re not from here either, actually.” Before Buck can ask, Bobby answers. “Pennsylvania. Wilkes-Barre, I think. Now. Hotdish.”

Wordlessly, leaning back against the opposite counter in the small kitchen, Buck nods. 

“Normally I’d make it with cream of mushroom soup,” Bobby says, reaching up to pull a can out of the cupboard, “but you’re allergic to mushrooms, so we’re gonna go with cream of chicken.” 

_ Allergic to mushrooms. From Pennsylvania. _ Buck files the thoughts away, next to  _ good with kids _ and  _ estranged from family, _ adding them to his meager but slowly growing autobiography. 

They cook together, side by side in Bobby’s kitchen. Bobby gives him directions, telling him to cut carrots or grate cheddar cheese, with an easy familiarity that leads Buck to believe this is something they do together with some degree of frequency. The apartment is warm, and gets a few degrees warmer as the oven pre-heats, ground beef browning on the stove top with a soundtrack of quiet sizzling. Eventually, after the timer is set and the dishes are cleaned up and set in the dishwasher, all that’s left to do is wait. While the hotdish cooks, Bobby waves Buck into the living room.

“Humor me for a minute,” he says, lines deepening on his face as he takes Buck by the shoulders, pushing him to sit on the edge of the couch. “Let me check your stitches, make sure everything looks alright.”

Rather than point out that Chimney and Hen would have noticed if there was something wrong with his stitches in the fifty-six odd times they checked, either by actually sitting Buck down to look or by stealing glances when they thought he wasn’t paying attention, Buck obeys. He agreeably tilts his head when Bobby takes ahold of his jaw and moves him so that the stitches are illuminated by the lamp, the same one that matches the curtains. His other hand moves carefully through Buck’s hair to get better visualization, and then a little longer than is justified by that, smoothing down wayward strands until he’s satisfied, though satisfied with what, Buck couldn’t say.

“Bruises doing alright?” Bobby asks, his voice a warm rumble from over Buck’s head. Still and pliant in Bobby’s hands, Buck just hums his agreement, 

The fall from the roof had left him with more than just stitches and a scrambled brain. There was also deep, painful bruising, marking up his back and left side, where he’d taken the majority of the landing. He’d seen it when changing out of the hospital gown and each time he’s changed his shirt or showered, and he knows from how it feels that there’s worse damage where he can’t see, and Buck is sure that if he were to try and get a glimpse, his back would still be painted in now yellow-green splotches. It feels better now than it had that first day, though, by leaps and bounds, so it’s not a lie to say they’re ‘alright’. Something about that, not lying to Bobby, feels like it’s important.

“Good. That’s good.” To the sound of a deep, measured breath from in front of him, Bobby’s palm comes to settle over Buck’s neck, thumb moving in a short, protective arc over the point of his pulse, thudding quietly in his throat. It’s something that could feel deeply threatening, he supposes, the position of that hand, the strength he knows lies behind it, but it’s not. It’s the opposite, even. “Well, looks to me like you’re going to be okay,” is the final verdict on his condition.

Buck closes his eyes, focuses on the feeling of strong, gentle fingers still holding the side of his neck, and tells himself that he believes it. There’s a dip in the cushion next to him, a shift in the touch, but Bobby doesn’t let go. And in the time remaining not consumed by clean-up or the brief exam, Bobby continues to not let go, right until the moment the timer goes off, and dinner is ready.

It’s not familiar, Buck wouldn’t go that far. But something about this, standing here in this apartment he apparently helped decorate, looking at something he and Bobby made together - something Bobby taught him how to make… It doesn’t feel familiar, but it feels right. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ON GD I WILL BE FINISHING THIS FIC
> 
> hi im so sorry there was some... stuff that happened that made it so i couldn't really touch this for a long time but thanks to the lovely words of everyone who's commented on it and one person who was kind enough to send me a message on tumblr about this fic, i finally managed to crack the code and crank out another chapter. 
> 
> i'll try not to make any promises i can't keep, but i'm fired up enough about wanting buck to have some care and attention focused on him that i'm pretty sure i'll end up writing the last chapter before too much longer. 
> 
> much love to you all, thanks to you eternally if you're still here after such a long wait <3 it's a little extra long, just for you

> _ I don't wanna know who I am _
> 
> _ Cause heaven only knows what I'll find _
> 
> _ \- Mother Mother, "Alright" _

It’s a suggestion from the neurologist, when Buck goes to a follow up appointment and is forced to report, half embarrassed and a half frustrated, that he still doesn’t remember anything. It's the same doctor as the one who’d seen him initially, Dr. Martin Rochester, the one who’d told him the brain was a miraculous thing and looked at Buck like he was a particularly fascinating exhibit at a local science fair. He’s still got the same expression on, leading Buck to begin to wonder if maybe he’d been born with resting  _ this is fascinating _ face, when he makes the odd recommendation at the end of the appointment. 

The suggestion is, on its face, simple. Dr. Rochester wants Buck to go back to the station. Obviously not to do anything potentially dangerous to him or to anyone else - certainly not out on the rig on a call, for example, at least not yet, though the possibility of a ride-along isn’t off the table at some point - but to physically put him back into his routine. Memory is a fickle thing, as Dr. Rochester says, adding to the pile of moments where Buck wonders if he might’ve been better off being the kind of brain doctor that didn’t have to talk to actual patients, and it’s never predictable what sort of input might trigger it. Being back in the space he spends so much of his time in, trying to do some of the things he does at the job that is, according to Bobby, Hen, and Chim, the air he breathes, it might do him some good. 

When he brings the possibility up to Bobby that night over dinner, having made his way back to the station captain’s apartment in the cycle of babysitting handoffs, Buck isn’t expecting the reaction he gets. 

“Sure,” Bobby says easily. There’s a dish towel thrown over his shoulder and he’s stirring a pan of vegetables on the stove, a quietly domestic sight Buck has grown to find familiar. “I don’t see why not. You can come in with me tomorrow.”

“Really?” Not that he wants to talk Bobby out of it, but the agreement is a lot quicker and easier than Buck had been expecting, for whatever reason. “I won’t, like… Get in the way or anything? ‘Cause somebody’s gonna have to watch me, I can’t just wander around trying things to see if I remember how to do them. I won’t even know where anything is.” 

The sound of the spatula stirring the combination of diced carrots, broccoli, and snow peas in the pan disappears, leaving behind only the quiet sizzle-pop of oil between produce and hot teflon. Bobby’s hand has gone still, no longer making its steady figure eights over the pan, and he’s looking at Buck with an odd expression on his face. It’s an expression Buck has seen several times since he woke up in the hospital, and he still doesn’t quite know what to make of it. If he had to describe it, he’d call it a strange mix of contemplation, questioning, and something like sadness. Having that look trained on him makes Buck’s cheeks heat up, embarrassed and somewhat shy, and he quickly redirects his own attention back down to the suddenly very interesting sight of cooking vegetables. 

“You won’t be in the way,” Bobby says eventually, the spatula resuming its soft scraping noise.

“It’s your job to help people, not…” Buck couldn’t say why he’s arguing if he was asked, the words just coming, though he doesn’t know where from.

“Not help you?” 

The question is pointed, and Buck feels his face heat up again. He shrugs.

“We’ll walk you through some stuff while we’re there. If we get a call out, we’ll go, and someone else can help you while we’re gone, or you can find something else to do if you’re not comfortable with that, or if you need a break.” 

It’s something Bobby does sometimes, Buck has picked up on this. He presents things, plans and suggestions, like they’re simple and straightforward when they seem to Buck like anything but. Maybe it’s the Grand Canyon in his head where his memory should be, barely beginning to be patched with the pathetic amount of new memories he’s formed since the accident, but nothing seems simple to him. Not even getting a cup of coffee. 

(Hen had taken him a few days previously, to this little shop near what she’d called his ‘college boy nightmare house’ that she’d said was his favorite. And it must be, given that when they’d walked in, the staff had recognized Buck immediately. The redhead at the counter with the brightly painted name tag reading ALEXIS had called him by name and started plugging an order into the screen before Buck so much as said a word, while the blond at the machines whose apron announced her to be RACHEL asked about the station while she started their coffees. Hen answered so he didn’t have to try to, introducing herself and making small talk with the girl while Buck stood there and tried to find anything about the place he recognized The whole process was alien and uncomfortable and he hasn’t been back since.)

But Bobby seems to know what he’s talking about, and he sounds as sure as he always does, so Buck does something he’s had to do so many times he’s far past lost count and takes his word for it, going on faith that it really would be okay. At the very least, he figures that Bobby is in charge, so if the others are annoyed or put out by the situation, they probably won’t be too loud about it.

Walking back into the station is, in a word, anticlimactic. It was a ridiculous thought, but some part of Buck had been holding onto the idea that stepping across the threshold would be some kind of magic bullet, would flip a switch and everything would be back again. No such luck, as his boot comes down on the smooth cement floor and nothing happens. No flood of memories rushes back, no sudden flash of recognition strikes him. 

What’s worse is that Buck can tell the others are feeling it too. He’d rode in with Bobby and found Hen and Chim waiting for them at the entrance, all of them together with him when he’d stepped over that invisible boundary and come inside. Though nobody said anything, and they’d kept their faces carefully and impressively blank, Buck could feel the tense, hopeful anticipation humming in the air like some kind of electricity. He feels it too when he doesn’t whirl around and shout that he’s remembered everything, that the friend they look for in his face every time they see him is back. While they still don’t betray it aloud, smiling at him and patting him on the back, welcoming him inside, the disappointment is palpable. 

After they escort Buck to the lockers so he can leave the bag he’d brought with him, the process of putting him through the paces of some of the simpler duties at the firehouse begins. They bring him somewhere, ask him to do something, and then let him see if he can manage it on his own before trying to help, usually Bobby providing the bulk of the instruction while Chim and Hen hang back and chime in encouragement every so often. The discovery they make fairly quickly is an interesting one - it’s like Buck’s body remembers much of what to do, but his mind is another story entirely. There are actions he can perform, routines his hands move through when something is put into them, but as soon as he tries to think too hard about what he’s doing and how, everything grinds to a halt. 

“Muscle memory,” Hen says, sounding impressed, when Buck gets distracted by bickering with Chim about something, only to look down after and realize he’s gotten his entire turnout gear on without stopping or needing help. “I’ll be damned. That’s kinda cool.”

It is, Buck has to agree, pretty cool. The discovery proves, overall, to be both encouraging and frustrating. On the one hand, it proves that the things he’d lost when his head hit that rock aren’t gone completely. They’re still inside him somewhere, lurking and buried deep, but they still  _ exist, _ and it had been getting to the point that Buck wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. On the other hand, though, it means that recovering his memories is, in all good likelihood, possible, he just hasn’t managed to do it yet. Somewhere in him is his life, his memory,  _ himself, _ Buck just can’t find it, and a part of him has to wonder if it might just be his fault.

Maybe, just maybe, the reason Buck can’t remember is because, somewhere deep down, he doesn’t  _ want _ to remember. Whoever he is, whoever these people, Buck and Hen and Chim who have been so patient and so protective with him right from the start, are waiting for him to get back to being, maybe that person isn’t worth getting back to. Sure they seem to miss him, and they don’t seem like the type of people who’d be that attached to a  _ complete _ screw up, but you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, right? Maybe a similar concept applies here, something about missing something that isn’t there more than you’d actually want it if it came back. There’s no real way to know for sure, but one thing Buck does know is this: he isn’t sure if he likes the picture he’s piecing together of his own reflection. 

The roommates he hardly knows, the family that seems to some kind of minefield from what he’s been able to gather, the way he’s floating through these people’s homes like some kind of ghost bound to a haunted object they’re passing between them… Buck doesn’t know what kind of person lives like that, but he’s not sure it’s the kind of person he wants to be, and maybe his brain knows that it’s not, and is trying to protect him from a truth he’s not ready to face. 

Buck read it on the internet one night, unable to sleep and browsing his phone on the futon Chim made up for him, the word that can sometimes apply to injuries like his and the effects they leave behind, the ones that sometimes doctors can’t identify a physical, medical cause for. Psychosomatic. It’s still a real injury, the forum he’d been knee-deep in had been quick to specify, but one of the mind rather than of the brain, and one much harder to figure out how to treat. Buck wonders if Dr. Rochester will bring it up at their next appointment, or if he’ll get another round of MRIs and ‘wait and see’s before he’s turfed to a psychiatrist.

Though the thought haunts him especially much now that he’s seen first hand that all that information is still in him somewhere, just out of his reach, Buck isn’t left with much time to contemplate it. It’s not just the drills he’s experimentally running either. People from other shifts keep coming up to him and asking how he’s doing, introducing themselves with a hasty awkwardness when they realize that no, genuinely he doesn’t remember anything including their names. It’s an unnerving experience, and Buck’s instinct is to stick close to the three he knows, particularly Bobby, practically hiding in the man’s shadow when he turns around and almost runs smack into the latest newcomer. 

Though the people he’s familiar with, the ones he’s spent every day around who have quickly become the anchors holding his world upright and in place, eventually are called out and sent to attend to several emergencies, Buck is never left alone. There’s always someone there, even when he’s sitting on the couch reading a copy of some scientific news journal with Hen’s name printed in the address box. The ones who’ve introduced themselves and acted in a way that leads him to believe they’re at least on friendly terms if not friends outright try and help like Bobby, Hen, and Chim had been doing, but the others just… hover. They hover and stare and mutter sometimes, like they think he’s lost his sight and hearing as well as his memories. 

Over the course of the day, it builds and builds until Buck begins to feel claustrophobic. The walls of the spacious building start to close in on him, the stares seeming more pointed, the whispers louder, the hovering more suffocating. They’re back now, Bobby rifling through a stack of papers while Chim talks about their last call and Hen leans over Buck’s shoulder to see what he’s reading. Even with the extremely bizarre situation the station is dealing with, the three of them seem to have slotted into an easy rhythm, falling into place around each other the way that people who work together day in and day out come to do. Buck himself, being the situation at hand, is not feeling quite so at ease. 

Bobby, Hen, and Chim are a Rube Goldberg machine, and there’s a missing piece. Buck knows it’s him, knows that ordinarily he would fit into this picture somewhere, but he doesn’t know what shape that piece, his piece is supposed to be. What does he normally do here, when they’re just spending down time at the station, not on a call and not prepping for the next one? How does he usually act? 

Of course, none of those questions actually have any answers. They just prompt more questions, piling on top of each other inside Buck’s crowded head. Eventually the mess inside his head and the crush of people around him gets to be too much, and Buck feels like he’s going to suffocate if he has to tolerate it for one more minute. It’s hard to slip away, moments where nobody is paying direct attention to him being few and far between as he plays the spectacle of the day at the firehouse, but he does find one, and then he’s finally, finally alone.

The air outside the station isn’t exactly a fresh mountain breeze, this is Los Angeles after all, but it loosens something in Buck’s chest to get away from everything. The more steps he takes away from the building the lighter he feels. There are no eyes on him, looking for a person he doesn’t remember how to be, no expectations backing him into a corner, no hundred different little things to remind him that his brain’s been flipped upside down into an episode of the Twilight Zone that feels like it will never end. It feels great for all of maybe five minutes or so, until Buck comes to a dead stop on the sidewalk and realizes he has no idea where he is. 

Looking around is pointless. He can’t remember if he’s the type of person who usually takes walks in the neighborhood around where he works, but even if he is, he wouldn’t recognize any of his usual routes. Buck is alone on a street he doesn’t know, and suddenly his desire for solitude vanishes. All he wants is to turn around and see Bobby standing there, to feel that same rush of ‘everything’s going to be okay’ that he’d felt when he’d woken up in the hospital and seen the man sitting next to his bed, knowing even when he didn’t know anything else that as long as Bobby was there, he was safe. He wants to see Hen and Chim, acutely feeling the absence of the anchor points holding his life in place and keeping it from spiralling out completely into some strange nightmare.

What had been suffocating back at the station now feels like shelter, a shelter Buck desperately wants to get back to, if only he could remember  _ how _ to get there. 

Before he realizes what he’s doing, Buck is walking again, mind spinning and heart hammering in his throat. He doesn’t think about where he’s going, just what he’s going towards, the firehouse with the only part of his world that feels solid or dependable waiting for him inside. Thankfully, the same sort of muscle memory concept seems to apply here, and the sight of the house sends so much relief through Buck his knees go weak. When he reaches the building and rushes inside, he’s not expecting the sight that greets him there immediately.

The first thing Buck sees when he sets eyes on Hen and Chim is that for first responders, they really need to work on their ability to remain calm, because at the moment, they both look absolutely frantic without an identifiable good reason why. The reason why becomes pretty readily apparently, though, when Chim catches sight of him and immediately snags a hand in the shoulder of Hen’s uniform, tugging at her until she spins around to look too. Both of them make the transition very fast from panic to relief and start coming towards him at a quick clip.

For his part, Buck freezes up completely. He has no idea what is about to come next in this interaction, and if he’d been asked to predict, he definitely wouldn’t have gone with one particular detail that occurs right when they get within reach of him. Both of them, acting on what seems like some kind of twin autopilot, reach out like they’re about to touch him. When he sees the hands coming for him, not anticipating that they might, he goes even stiffer than he had been, breath arresting in his lungs on an instinct of their own. 

Hen at least notices this because she stops her own half-started reach, grabbing onto Chim’s forearm to halt him as well before either of them can make contact. A moment after it happens, Buck regrets it, wishes he could’ve reigned in the flinch, because after the disastrous little walk he’s just had, he feels like he’s come completely unmoored. 

It’s a feeling he’s had several times, the sense that he’s ready to drift off out of his own life at any moment with nothing left to tie him there but them. Their proximity grounds Buck more than he’ll ever admit it does, and as he’d realized he was terrifyingly, vulnerably alone in a world he didn’t know, all he’d wanted was to feel the steady press of Chim’s hand on his shoulder, Hen’s around his wrist, Bobby’s at the back of his neck. 

Come to think of it, if these two were so worked up, Buck would expect Bobby to have been-

“Cap!” Hen has turned and hollered it over her shoulder before Buck can finish the thought, voice echoing loud off the distant ceiling.

There’s the sound of rapid footsteps down a staircase and then Bobby appears around the engine parked nearby. As soon as he sees Buck he’s talking, and any desire to be closer to them that Buck had been feeling vanishes suddenly, replaced by something hot and upset and maybe just a little angry.

“Where were you?” Bobby is asking as he arrives at where their awkward little triangle is standing. His brow is furrowed heavily and his voice is a shade sharper than usual. “We looked all over the place and you just weren’t here, did you leave the building? You can’t do that without telling us, Buck.” 

It’s Bobby’s hand’s turn to rise now, stretching out, but this time something is different. This time, the way Buck jerks to escape the path of his reaching grasp is deliberate, harsh and unmistakable as he moves his body out of range. 

“Don’t,” he snaps, feeling like a cornered dog with its hackles up. “This is  _ exactly _ why I left, this place is suffocating, you guys are  _ suffocating, _ and I just needed a minute to breathe without one of you  _ watching _ me, okay? I’m not totally helpless, I can take a walk around the block without a babysitter, and I just- I needed you to stop  _ looking _ at me like you’re waiting for something. Just- Whoever you’re waiting for, you better be ready to keep waiting, because he didn’t come back just now. He’s  _ not here, _ and I don’t know where to find him.”

With that Buck whirls around and leaves as fast as he can without breaking into a run, before any of the three shocked people in front of him could find the wherewithal to speak. He ends up somewhere he’s at least passingly familiar with after the events of the day so far, the glass-walled locker room where the stalls holding all their gear sit in neat little rows. There are names labeled over the top of them and the same names repeated below in much larger print, emblazoned in proud, all-caps yellow on the backs of turnout coats. There’s one stall in particular in front of him, one classic black and yellow jacket that he can’t take his eyes off, now that he’s sat down before it. 

BUCKLEY, the jacket reads. The name looks like a riddle Buck doesn’t have the answer to, like the answer to a riddle he doesn’t know the beginning of, worst of all like some kind of accusation.

Sitting there looking at it, staring at the jacket and the rest of the gear around it like he’s going to find himself in that stall somewhere, hiding in plain sight all along, Buck feels very small and very foolish. He wishes he could go out and take back everything he’d just said and done out there, the way he’d blown off Bobby’s attempt to touch him, the unfair little tantrum he’s just thrown at people who’ve done nothing but help him every step of the way. 

Buck isn’t left with too long to sit there alone and stew in his own guilty regret. There’s the soft sound of steps coming around the bank of stalls and then Hen is there, leaning against the wall with her arms folded and a serious expression on her normally friendly face. An expectant pause and a look around doesn’t show anyone else tailing her in, no full court press about to set in on him and demand an explanation. It’s just Hen, and she’s come on her own.

“We’ve gotta talk,” is what she says eventually, and while her voice isn’t harsh, it’s not soft either, leaving no room for argument. “You’ve gotta start talking to me right now, and I’m not gonna be taking no for an answer.”

After the kind of crap he’s just pulled, Buck figures that’s fair, and he owes her at least that much. Owes them all that much. He waits for the questions to start, the outline of everything he’s just done admittedly very wrong, but it doesn’t come. Hen doesn’t say anything more, just stays settled back against the wall with its metal struts and glass panes, and looks at him like she’s got all the time in the world to sit and wait for him to figure it out himself. 

Unmoored. That’s how Buck had felt earlier, when he’d realized how acutely alone he was outside. That’s how he’d felt a hundred, maybe a thousand times over since that now-hazy day in the hospital when, Bobby told him later, he hadn’t even been able to recall his own name. And that’s how he feels now, sitting on this bench with Hen’s eyes on him, trying to come up with something, anything he can say to her to explain the completely inexcusable way he’s just acted.

“Sorry,” is what eventually makes its way out, in a quiet, shamed tone more suitable to a grounded middle schooler than a grown man who’d just acted like one. 

It feels lackluster and nowhere near sufficient, but it’s as good a place to start as any, and Hen’s face doesn’t betray anything at hearing it. No satisfaction, not willing to take that and go, but no disappointment either, and that’s something. Buck fishes around for the words to continue, to articulate what, exactly, it is he’s sorry for. It’s not just the way he’d yelled at them or the contents of the yelling. Nor is it just disappearing on them either, which had obviously caused them no small amount of grief, if the way they’d looked at him like he’d been gone five years not five minutes was any indication. He’s not sure he’ll quite be able to get the other thing out just yet, though, so he decides to get that part out of the way first.

“I didn’t mean to scare anyone,” Buck mumbles, looking away from Hen and down at his own hands. His face feels hot and he knows that if he caught sight of his own reflection, he’d be blushing fiercely. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. You’re not- You guys aren’t suffocating. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.” Just long enough passes before Hen responds that Buck’s heart starts to jump faster in his chest, breath growing shallower as anxiety crawls its way up his throat. 

But then she does respond, and her voice washes over him like a cool breeze on the hottest day of the year, telling him, “You did. Scare us. It’s okay that you needed a minute, it’s okay if you needed ten minutes, but you should’ve told someone where you were going. I don’t think it would’ve been quite so bad, but when we realized nobody knew where you were, we tried calling your phone. It kept going straight to voicemail, and that’s when we started getting really worried.”

“Oh.” Sticking his hand in his pocket, Buck pulls out the device, which sits flat in his palm, dormant and lifeless. “Turned it off earlier.” He’d wanted to conserve the battery to play games when there wasn’t someone around to walk him through memory-jogging drills, and it wasn’t like there was anyone he could text anyway. Everyone he knows in the world, pretty much, is in this building. “Sorry,” he says again.

“Next time, just tell us, okay? Nobody thinks you’re helpless, but we worry. I think we’re allowed that much, at least.” 

They’re allowed anything at this point, Buck thinks but doesn’t say. Without them, he doesn’t know how he’d have made it this far through this nightmare, and he owes them everything. It’s a debt he’s viscerally uncomfortable acknowledging, but it’s there whether he acknowledges it or not. 

What Buck eventually decides to admit is, “I am, though, aren’t I? Helpless. Mostly, anyway. I can’t do  _ anything _ without one of you pretty much holding my hand, and I keep wondering what happens if I never remember? How long can this keep going on before you’re sick of it, because… I’m sorry. Because I feel like you’re all watching me and waiting for someone to come home, someone you- someone you love, and I don’t remember who that person is. I don’t remember how to be him, and I’m scared I might never be him again. So I panicked, and then I came back and saw you there  _ waiting _ still, and I panicked again.”

There’s another long pause, long enough that Buck starts to get panicky again, and then there’s a muffled scraping sound as Hen pushes off the wall she’d been leaning against. She walks around the bench and right up to where he’s sitting, sitting down next to him, one leg thrown over it so she’s facing him fully. For what feels like forever, Hen just sits there and looks at him, brown eyes soft and somewhere between fond and sad as they study his face. 

“It’s good to know,” she says finally, a smile quirking her lips up at one side, humor in her voice though Buck can’t find  _ anything _ funny about any of this, “that you’re just as dense as you’ve always been.”

“Excuse me?” Buck can’t help it when it slips out, surprised and a little offended. He’d just confessed something that had felt so huge and terrible it was crushing him, and what he gets in return is an insult? And not even a very good one, because he’d heard her talking about some person on a call out who’d tried to intervene and tell them they weren’t doing their job right because ‘that’s not how it looks on  _ Grey’s Anatomy’ _ so he knows she can do better than ‘dense.’ 

“Listen,” Hen tells him. The humor is gone, but there’s no indication she tends to walk back her ‘dense’ comment. Instead, she shakes her head a little, and continues. “You irritate the ever loving hell out of me.”

Buck can’t help it. “Thanks, you’re off to a great start.”

“No, okay, it’s time for you to shut up and listen for once.” There’s even less humor in Hen’s voice and face now, everything about her gone deadly serious, and Buck obeys. “I never asked for this, right? I never looked up at night and found the first star and wished for the universe to drop a- a shithead baby brother into my life, but I got one anyway, and here you are. You fell out of the sky and into my life and then there was an earthquake and you went and fell off a roof. You almost split your head open right in front of me, Buck, and there was  _ nothing _ I could do- nothing  _ any _ of us could do to stop it or help you after it happened. We all just had to watch. So you’re gonna have to forgive us if we’re a little touchy for a minute when we turn around and you’re not where we left you.”

Buck can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, the hot blush from earlier back and making him feel like someone’s wrapped his whole body in cotton. He has to look away from her again, unable to come up with an answer to that, but she doesn’t let him. Hen’s hands catch his face, palms slightly calloused but gentle as they turn him to look at her. 

“I’m not finished just yet,” she tells him, one hand twisting slightly so her thumb can reach to swipe affectionately over his eyebrow, where Buck knows his birthmark sits. “We’re not waiting for anyone. There is no ‘him’ that we’re trying to find. There’s just you.” Buck is unable to stop the little choking sound that he makes when she says that, and Hen takes it in stride, allowing him to slump forward as his spine collapses on itself. Her hands disappear from his face and the arms that close tight around him are strong and almost familiar. “I want you to remember, of course I do, but you’re still  _ you _ . Even if you don’t ever get them back, Buck, you’ll always be enough. I don’t care if you’re like this the rest of your life, there is no ‘him.’ The person we love is  _ you, _ memory or no.”

From where he sits, half collapsed against Hen with his chin digging into her shoulder and her voice unwavering in his ear, it feels to Buck for the first time as if maybe, even if he never remembers anything at all, things might turn out okay.


End file.
